Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

Lunch brings Alex another lesson, while the clinic’s online accounts draw a different kind of attention.

Evan left Alex to check his answers and went to get the couple their medicine.

It was noon. Evan recommended the steamed-bun shop beside the clinic. “If you’re hungry, buy a few buns next door for lunch.”

Alex, who was checking his answers on the computer, stared. “What? I can’t even go out for lunch?”

Evan gave him a disapproving look. “Your fundamentals are that bad, and you still have the nerve to go out for lunch? Eat a couple of buns and use the time you save to read. Learn something.”

“All right,” Alex agreed miserably.

“Keep studying. I’m going,” Evan said.

“Where are you going, Dr. Xu?”

“To lunch.”

“Uh…” Alex felt even more miserable. Some people had all the luck.

Ben brought out the lunch his wife had packed for him. He opened the box and took out his chopsticks. “Work hard, young man. Evan used to eat buns at every meal. He’d read while he ate them, too.”

Alex suddenly turned toward him and asked in all seriousness, “Is that how you learn faster and remember more—by eating buns while you read?”

“Huh?” Ben was baffled. What kind of reasoning was that?

Alex turned back, muttering, “That must be it… Otherwise, how could Dr. Xu be so good when he’s still so young?”

He immediately hurried out, bought a pile of buns, and even offered to share them with Ben.

Ben looked down at the lunch his wife had made. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so appetizing.

Evan returned to the apartment complex and went upstairs.

Clara had his lunch ready. “Come and eat.”

“How’s your dad?”

“He’s had one batch of the medicine and he’s started sweating. I’ll take him a bowl of congee in a little while. You eat first.”

“All right.” Evan nodded.

Clara filled a bowl with rice for him and sat down beside him. “I’ve posted the rebuttal on Weibo and the WeChat public account. Charlie has reposted it, too.”[1]

“How’s it going?” Evan asked.

Clara shrugged. “How do you think? We’re getting torn apart. The accounts have all been overrun.”

Evan frowned. “Let me see.”

Clara put her phone away. “Eat first.”

“It’s fine. Let me have a look.”

“All right. Just don’t get angry.” She handed him the phone.

Evan took it, opened the app, and began scrolling, his brows drawn tightly together. There were already more than ten thousand comments under the rebuttal on Weibo. The screen was full of people calling him a “witch doctor,” along with all kinds of crude abuse.

His inbox was already full of abusive private messages, too. People hid behind the internet and let their worst selves show.

Evan’s face darkened at once.

Clara studied his expression cautiously. “Are you all right?” she asked softly. “I told you not to look.”

Evan set the phone down gently. Looking at the food in front of him, he said grimly, “From now on… don’t run these accounts anymore. You won’t have to handle the publicity.”

Clara was taken aback. “Why?”

Evan picked up his chopsticks, his expression still grim. “I don’t want you to have to put up with these online attacks.”

Far from being angry, Clara could barely keep from grinning. Looking up at the ceiling, she said, “But I don’t. They’re your accounts. You’re Dr. Xu, the Chinese medicine doctor. I’m not getting attacked. You’re the one they’re insulting.”

Evan froze with his bowl and chopsticks in his hands. He turned toward her, puzzled. “Is that how it works?”

Clara spread her hands. “My surname isn’t Xu!”

For a moment, she had him going. Something about that logic felt wrong, but it didn’t seem entirely wrong, either.

“Relax. It’s fine,” Clara reassured him. “I don’t read the comments. I just post on Weibo. Besides, they’re not insulting me.”

“All right,” Evan said, subdued.

“They’re just people who hate Chinese medicine,” Clara said. “They keep recycling the same old arguments. Nothing new. I’m not scared of them.”

Evan nodded glumly. “Forget them. As long as we put the truth out there. Did you explain everything clearly?”

The chapter on NovelPhoenix was copied without permission, though reading the author’s posting there supports the writer.

Without blinking, Clara patted her chest. “Of course! Leave it to me. Don’t worry.”

“Good. I’ll go and look in on your dad.”

“Eat first,” Clara said. “I just opened the door to check on him. He’s still resting. It’s not good to keep opening it.”

“Fair enough.” Evan nodded and began eating.

After lunch, Evan went in to see Adam. This was his first day taking medicine in the closed room. He had sweated a great deal, but he was in good spirits.

When Sun Simiao had suffered wind stroke, he had found a closed room and taken Xuming Zhusan without interruption for ten days and ten nights, then recovered completely.

But Sun Simiao had been nearly a hundred at the time. Someone in his fifties, like Adam, shouldn’t need that long.

Evan estimated that Adam would need, at most, half as long to recover. Once again, he reminded Clara to make sure he took the medicine often enough. Its effect had to be sustained without a gap; they needed one continuous effort.[2]

Having given his instructions, Evan went downstairs to see patients at Mingxin Clinic. Business was good now, and there was still plenty to do.

Upstairs, Clara cleared away the bowls and chopsticks, then opened Charlie’s Weibo account on her phone. He had kept his word. Once again, he was standing alongside Evan. He had reposted something that was bound to attract abuse, and was speaking up for Evan as well.

His account had been overrun too, of course.

An influencer with forty million followers was no one to take on lightly.

Charlie had only four hundred thousand followers, and DrXuChineseMedicine had only eighty thousand. They weren’t even in the same league.

Ding-dong. A WeChat notification sounded.

Clara picked up her phone. Charlie had sent a voice message.

“Clara, when are you going to post that evidence? My account’s been overrun for ages.”

A small, secret smile appeared on Clara’s lips. The same old trick as last time: baiting the hook.

She replied, “We haven’t got enough attention yet. Get him to repost ours and attack us. That’s when it’ll be time.”

Charlie replied, “That’s not going to be easy.”

“Then what do I need you for?”

Having replied, Clara put her phone down and took a bowl of congee in to her father. After he ate it, he would need more medicine before long. She had to keep watching over him.

Charlie rubbed his head and resorted to his old trick, too: hiring paid commenters to flood Dr. Cinnamon’s posts. He wanted to see whether he could get a bite.[3]

In truth, Charlie wasn’t worried this time. Why? He was sure of his ground. They had evidence. The Jingui Yaolüe really didn’t contain the claim in question, and Lanzhou University had done no such research. The man was making things up.[4]

There was plenty of attention to go around now. “Kicked out of the family group chat for sharing Dr. Cinnamon’s article debunking incompatible foods” had climbed to number two on the trending list. Charlie wanted his share of that attention, too—a big boost in followers.

Clara, meanwhile, couldn’t stand to let him spout nonsense and smear Chinese medicine. Of course she was going to expose him. Besides, they didn’t have enough attention yet. No one would listen to anything they said. They had to get him to take the bait and draw enough attention for more people to hear them.

Which was why these two still hadn’t released the evidence.

They were still fishing.

Back at Mingxin Clinic, Evan went over Alex’s earlier pattern assessments. He couldn’t help shaking his head. Several of Alex’s answers were wrong. Had he actually been treating those patients, the results would have been poor.

Alex rubbed his stomach in embarrassment, then let out a burp.

That afternoon, Evan had Alex follow him as he worked.

He began teaching him the key points of pattern differentiation and developing his skills in clinical diagnosis and pattern assessment.[5]

Ben kept busy too, calling in a few regular customers for wellness treatments.

Toward evening, Alex said goodbye to Evan and headed home, exhausted in body and satisfied in spirit. He had work tomorrow. He would have to get up early and go on ward rounds with Director Zhong.

Reader Notes

Reader Notes

↩︎ Public accounts and private messages. Weibo lets users publish posts, comment, and repost other people’s material. A WeChat public account publishes content to readers and followers; it is a different channel from a private WeChat conversation. Clara is managing Evan’s public presence on both platforms. Public comments and private inboxes are distinct even when directed at the same account. The story’s follower counts and reactions belong to fictional accounts. Sources: Weibo Corporation — Business Overview; Tencent — Weixin Official Accounts; Tencent — Weixin & WeChat.↩︎ The historical account and the closed room.Zhusan identifies coarsely divided medicines prepared by boiling, rather than powder swallowed dry. The Qianjin Yaofang contains a first-person account of taking Xuming Zhusan through ten days and nights after wind stroke. Its broader regimen also calls for shelter from drafts. These passages explain the historical model behind Evan’s treatment. They do not establish Sun’s age during that illness, a modern stroke diagnosis, or Adam’s likely recovery time. The age comparison and estimate remain the novel’s account. “One batch” earlier translates the quantity of prepared herbs, not a newly specified single-dose schedule. Sources: Qianjin Yaofang — volume 8, Xuming Zhusan (Chinese transcription); Qianjin Yaofang — volume 1, “Taking Medicines,” and volume 8, “Wind Paralysis” (Chinese transcription).↩︎ Paid commenters and taking the bait. The Chinese term shuijun, literally “water army,” refers here to people hired to post online comments. It does not mean a navy, and the text does not identify them as automated bots. Charlie wants their comments to provoke a public response from Dr. Cinnamon. The fishing language describes that publicity tactic; it does not establish a police operation. Hiring commenters and ordinary readers joining an argument are separate actions. Source: Chen and colleagues — Battling the Internet Water Army, author abstract.↩︎ What the disputed evidence concerns. The Jingui Yaolüe, also known as Essentials from the Golden Cabinet, is the medical classic discussed earlier. The consulted transcription contains passages about crabs, but a search of that text found no persimmon reference. That check concerns one transcription, not every historical edition. Charlie’s categorical statement about Lanzhou University remains his position in the dispute; no matching original experimental report has been verified for this edition. An unsuccessful search cannot establish that research never existed. Source: Jingui Yaolüe Fanglun — section 24, food prohibitions (Chinese transcription).↩︎ Checking a pattern assessment. Pattern differentiation is the traditional analysis of clinical findings to identify a pattern of illness; it is more than assigning a name to one symptom. Here Alex is comparing his earlier assessments with Evan’s cases and then observing him at work. The wrong answers and Evan’s judgment about their likely results belong to this teaching scene. No treatment outcome for those hypothetical decisions is reported. Source: WHO — TCM terminology, entries 548, 550, and 552.